Lancer Effect: Separate Paths
by Cellulanus
Summary: The Reapers had the perfect plan: Exact order upon the chaos of organic evolution. But what happens when a civilization that is free from their influence is introduced? TalixShepard romance subplot included. Rated M to be safe for future chapters.
1. Prologue

_**"Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays, our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire."**_ :**Sovereign**

_Normandy SR2, 13 hours after suicide mission completion_

Shepard sat in his quarters, Sovereigns words ringing through his head. He couldn't help but wonder if he made the right choice handing the Collector base over to Cerberus. By using Reaper technology were they playing right into the Reapers hands? Just as soon as these questions crept up in his mind he shot them down. _No, we are already to far down the path._ Shepard though,_ The only way to remove that problem would be to completely cast aside all technology based on element zero and start allover from scratch. We don't have the time needed for that, the most we can hope to do is get ourselves as far down the path as possible. Still, I wonder what things would be different if humanity never encountered any alien technology..._

He let his thoughts shift to the present, there was still one unfinished matter with the crew that needed attendance. He had spoken most of the team and the crew over the course of the day, finding out what their plans were. Thane and Miranda died during the mission, Thanes death was his own damned fault, he should have known better then to send him into the vents. There was nothing he could have done about Mirandas death on the other hand, she died when she took a nasty fall after the human Reaper was killed. Jack was cutting loose, she'd disappear next time they docked. Samara was leaving back to asari space, saying she hoped that they would never meet again lest she be forced to try to kill him. Grunt said that he would stay as long as Shepard had enemies to fight. Legion was staying to communicate the Geths intentions in the war with the Reapers. Garrus said that he was with him until the end and accepted Shepard offer of making him his new second in command with Miranda gone. Jacob was sticking around for want of anything else to do. Mordin was cryptic about his intentions, but sounded like he intended to stay. Zaeed had surprised Shepard by saying that he would stick around for awhile at least, out of gratitude for helping him kill Vido, and about half of the Cerberus crew would be leaving to go back to their homes, no one important fortunately. Kasumi was... Well Shepard had no idea what she would do, or when he would know that she was gone. Tali was the last bit of unfinished business. He had put off talking to her partially because she was busy fixing the Normandy, and partially because he wanted to speak to her in private.

At that moment, the cabins doors open and Tali stepped in. "You wanted to see me?"

"Yes Tali," Shepard replied, standing to greet her, "Now that the mission is complete, I need to know what your plans are."

Tali stepped towards him, closing the small gap between them. "I think you already know the answer."

"I'm sure I do, but I need to hear it from you to make it official." Motioning to his desk, "Paperwork and all"

"Shepard, even if I wasn't exiled I would stay with you, you're everything I could hope for in a captain."

"Only as a captain?" He said teasingly.

Tali begain to speak with a great deal of uncertainty, she wanted their relationship, _them_, to work and she was worried that she might make a bad move and drive him away, "And... as a... What's the word... Mate? Partner...? Erm.... Lover?"

"How about all of the above?" he said with a smirk as he placed his hands on her sides.

"Shepard I... Are you sure tha-" Her words were suddenly interrupted by a short but nasty coughing fit.

Shepard was concerned, he hoped that their time together wasn't a mistake that would cost Tali her life, "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Really Shepard, I've been through worse, and normally its from a suit breach in combat, never from something as... enjoyable as our time together. But... About what I was about to say... Are you sure this is what you want? I mean... There are so many-"

"Tali, Tali." he interrupted her, placing his hand on the side of her helmet slipping it under the headscarf. He spoke softly, staring directly into her eyes through the helmet." We've been over this before. I don't care about the limitations we have, I'd want to be with you even if I never got to see your face. Now come on, it's been at least twenty hours since either of us have gotten any sleep." He took her hand and began leading her down the steps towards the sleeping area, she followed a bit uncertainly.

Tali honestly wasn't sure what to think, she didn't know the first thing about what human couples did or didn't do together. "I- You want me to sleep up here? With you?"

"Of course, in fact I insist."

"In that case who am I do say no?" Tali said as they reached the bed.

Shepard began to lay down, but was caught off guard when Tali placed her full weight on him, causing them both to fall unceremoniously onto the bed. Tali had Shepard firmly pined to the bed in a way that he wasn't sure he could break free even if he wanted to.

She began to speak, her voice heavily laced with erotic tones. "You know Shepard, you can't sleep in this dirty uniform. Besides, it will just get in the way of the nerve stimulation programs."

Something very rare happened to Shepard, he was taken off guard. "I thought you said you didn't want to use things like that."

"For our first time yes, but I don't had any objection to being together fakely between our real time. I still want to be with you and this is the only way I- we'll be able to do it regularly without dying."

"Then what are we waiting for, my love?" Shepard coyly asked.

Being refereed to as his love made her pause for a brief second. During that second a thousand thoughts raced through her head. Is this what love is? He loves me? Do I love him? Are we in love? Are but a few. Just as quickly as the questions were raised they were put to rest as she discovered the answer. The answer to all of the above was "yes"

She looked down on her love and said, "Nothing at all." With one hand she grabbed the buckles on his uniform, unclasping them. With her other hand she activated her omni tool and turned on her nerve stimulation programs.

* * *

**A/N: Rewritten.**


	2. Chapter 1: Unforeseen circumstances

_**"What is the good of experience if you do not reflect?" ****-Frederick the Great**_

_Tali wasn't an idiot, she knew the score._

_ They were two hours out from the Omega 4 relay. A few minutes ago, Miranda had come down and kicked her out of engineering. A few seconds ago she saw Shepard follow her in. She didn't need to guess what they were doing in there, and why Miranda had chosen that spot to do it. She was rubbing her face in her victory, she was taking Shepard in her domain. Making the simple act a personal message. "I won" She leaned on the console outside of the elevator overlooking the garage. She told herself that she wanted Shepard to be happy, that she didn't care who he was with as long as he was happy._

_ It didn't work._

_ She shuddered struggling to hold in her tears, she heard footsteps approaching but took no notice of them until she felt a light tap on her shoulder. She looked up into the face of Zaeed._

_ "Hey," he said, the normally gruff mercenary had a look of compassion on his face that looked completely out of place on him. "you look like you could use some rest, you can use my cot if you want, I wont be needing it anyways, got some things to take care of up in the armory."_

_ "Th-Thank you." Tali's grief was replaced by surprise. _There is probably a story behind that... _She thought as she began to make her way for the starboard cargo bay. As she walked she couldn't help but wish that she was going to Shepards cabin. As she lay down on the cot she couldn't help but wish that that cot was Shepards bed. She tried to push the thoughts out of her mind as she closed her eyes..._

...and when she opened them again she found herself in a very different place. She looked around the room quickly trying to place where she way. She quickly identified her surroundings as Shepards cabin.

_What? What am I doing here? What happened... Oh... _Her line of thought was cut short when her eyes came resting on Shepard sleeping next to her, and the events of the past two came back to her. She guessed that she rolled away from him when she was asleep, she quickly corrected this by pressing her body up to his and by laying her arm across his chest.

_It was just a dream. He chose me, not her. I'm the one that can make him happy... I'm so lucky... _As she finished her thought she realized just how lucky she was. It was harder to find a woman that didn't want Shepard then it was to find one that wanted him. He could literally have any woman he wanted of any race he wanted, there was even a krogan that put out a breeding request for him. If he wanted he could probably even find a group of women who would be willing to share him. With all of his options he chose her. She wasn't one of the millions that wanted him, she was the one that had him, she was the only one that he wanted.

This thought filled her with joy and the only thing she could do to react to it was to press herself up to him even tighter. Unfortunately this was accompanied by an audible crack when her faceplate collided with Shepards head, followed shortly by a tired grunt from him.

"Tali? What time is it? Is something wrong?" He asked, starting to lean up.

Tali pushed him back down, "Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you."

"Its okay, I'd rather be woken up by a certain quarians enthusiastic hugging then that annoying alarm clock."

EDI's blue hologram popped up on the other side of the room. "Commander, the Illusive Man wishes to speak to you, he says that he has some information that you'll want to see."

Shepard reluctantly began to get out of bed, much too Tali's protest. "...or a call from the Illusive Man, I'll be in the comm room in a few minutes.

Tali sat up in bed, watching Shepard as he got dressed in his Cerberus uniform. "Are you sure its a good idea to continue to work with Cerberus?"

Shepard paused for a moment before looking back at her and continuing getting dressed "Not entirely, but our first priority is to stop the Reapers by any means necessary. Even if all life in the galaxy is destroyed it will be worth it if the cycle of extinction is stopped. Besides, at best Cerberus will try to strengthen humanity from behind the scenes, at worst they'll try to form some sort of galactic empire. Either option is preferable to total destruction."

"If you're sure, I trust you Shepard, but please be careful. I don't think I could stand watching you die a second time, not with all that's happened between us."

Now fully dressed Shepard walked over to her smiling and kissed her visor, smudging it. "Don't worry Tali, not even the grave will keep you safe from me." With that he turned around and headed for the door.

* * *

The Illusive Man sat in his chair watching the massive star in the window. A sound from behind him told him that Shepard had just opened communications with him, he took one last drag on his cigarette before turning to greet him. "Shepard, I've received some interesting data that I think you'll be interested in."

"Is it from the Collector base?" Shepard asked, cautious but curious as always.

"No, we're still securing it, we have small teams on board being carefully watched for indoctrination, we don't want a repeat of what happened on the derelict Reaper after all. No, this has nothing to do with the Reapers."

"If it has nothing to do with the Reapers then what is it?"

The Illusive Man sat down in his chair and sipped his seemingly omnipresent brandy. "One of our agents reported a new debris field located in a remote system deep within the terminus systems. What is interesting about the debris is that evidence suggests that its around 300 years old, but it just appeared out of thin air in the last few weeks. On top of that there is at least one intact ship in the field that doesn't even come close to any current or historic ship profile and there are no traces of element zero based technology anywhere in the field."

"Interesting, but what does this have to do with me?"

"Pirate activity is high in the fields system, the Normandy is the only ship that can get to the field without attracting the unwanted attention of pirates or scavengers."

Shepard still wasn't sure "What's so important about it having technology not based on element zero?"

The Illusive Man sighed and took another drag of his cigarette. "As you know the main reason the Reapers have an advantage over us is because our technology is based on theirs, meaning that they know exactly where all of our strengths and weaknesses are. The only way to remove this advantage would be to completely cast aside the Mass Relays and element zero to start over from scratch. We don't have the time needed for that. If I'm right and this debris is from a civilization that developed without Reaper influence we could shift to fundamentally new technologies without having to start over from scratch, I don't have to tell you what a huge advantage that would give us in the war."

"Okay, send the coordinates to Joker and we'll check it out."

"Glad to hear it, and be careful. This is an even greater unknown then the Collectors were." The Illusive Man activated his console, cutting communications. He turned back to look at his star as he planned his next move in galactic affairs.


	3. Chapter 2: Worn out places

_**The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing****. -Issac Asimov**_

The Normandy jumped into the desolate system from its only Mass Relay and made a beeline for the coordinates presented by the Illusive Man. It stopped when it reached the edge of the debris field, the field being to thick for the Normandy to safely navigate. A short while later the ships bay door opened and a small shuttle flew out, heading into the heart of the field. Onboard Shepard, Tali and Legion waited.

EDIs voice came over their radio. "Sensors detect high radiation levels in the center of the field, my calculations suggest that your suit will protect you for thirty minutes at most."

Shepard snorted at this, "We've been through worse EDI, is there anything else you can tell us about the field or the ship? Or are we flying in the dark again?"

"While most of the field is composed out of common refined metals, many of the alloys are unusual. I am also picking up a number of unknown elements in the field. All other scan results are inconclusive."

Tali was staring out of the window, looking with amasment at the assorted hunks of metal floating outside. "Shepard I've never seen anything quite like this before, the sheer amount of scrap metal here could be used to completely rebuild half of the ships in the Migrant fleet!"

"Save some of your amazement for the ship we're here to see, if our information is half good it should be in better shape then anything else here."

As the shuttle approached the derelict ship the crew could begin to see many of the vessels features. It didn't look like anyship any of them had ever seen before. It was yellow in colour with a long, extented body and had two massive pods being held within some sort of oddly shaped ribcage that made up the center of the ship.

"EDI," Shepard said, "What are those pods filled with?"

"While scanners can penetrate the pods, I am unable to identify their contets. I do not even have sufficient data to guess their function"

"Great, is there anything your scanners can ide..."

"Shepard! You won't belive this!" Tali alerted, her arm pointing out of the window towards the front section of the craft, there he could make out some lettering, probably the name of the ship.

Squinting his eyes, Shepard could make out the words, "'DSE Ft. Worth'... Wait, that's english. That _can't_ be right."

Legion spoke up for the first time durring the trip, "This field pre-dates first contact with humans, however it is more likely that this ships creators were from Earth then a coincidence."

Shepard chuckled at Legions analisis, after all humans never made ships remotely like this. "What makes you think this thing is from Earth?"

"The odds of this ship's being from Earth are point zero seven six to the power of twenty three, the odds of a coincidence is point zero zero zero three two to the power of seventy five."

"I'm a soilder, not a god damned mathmatician. EDI, translation please?"

"While both probabilitys are near zero, the odds of coincidence are considerably closer to zero then the odds of Earth origin."

"Great, we'll be able to see for ourself soon enough. Pilot, drop us off on the nose of the ship!"

With heavy, magnetic footsteops the team made their way across the ships hull, looking for a hatch or hull breach that would let them enter into the bowls of the vessel. The shuttle had retreated from the ship wary of passing debris. Their search for an enterance lead them to the very nose of the odd vessel.

Tali's experience eyes could see a docking hatch no matter the ship and this strange vessel was no exeption. Tali walked over to it, thinking outloud. "This looks like a docking hatch, but I've never heard of any ship placing it on the front of the nose of a ship, it makes it hard to dock with moving ships."

Shepard walked to her side. "Do you see any way to open it from out here."

"Lets see..." Her eyes ran over the yellow metal until they came to a small lever sunken into the edge of the hatch marked with the words 'Manual release' "Oh, here it is, labeled too. How convinient." She grabbed the handle and pulled, but it only came up a short ways before nearly the entire handle broke off in her hand, leaving only a small stump to pull on."I've seen this before, someone broke this a long time ago and did a quick patch job to cover their tracks."

"This happens often?"

"From time to time. Usually its on newly aquire ships, but its not unheard of for a quarian to pull a stunt like this. If its a slendom used system these things can go for years without being found, probably what happened here." Tali examined the broken handle one last time before letting it go to join the rest of the field. While they had been talking Legion had moved to the other hatch and already entered the ship. She stepped inside of the hatch into an airlock where Legion was attempint to restore power to a control pannel with its omni-tool, Shepard was right behind her.

Lights on the pannel begain to dimly flicker to life as Legion turned to the new arrivals. "The internal door does not have a manual override. We have temporarily restored power to the airlock mechanisms, they should engage momentarily." Almost simultaniously there was a sudden shaking and the outer door slid back to its closed position, followed by the hiss or represurization. Once it was complete the internal doors began to open, but they stopped almost as soon as they started, the lights of the control pannel also returned to darkness. "Power depleted." Legion stated matter of factly. He simply walked over to the doors and forced them open.

Shepard stepped into the lead, beyond was a dark halway. The walls were bare blue metal, standing in stark contrast to the yellow exterior. Shepards activated his omni-tool and checked for power sources, none were found in the imidiat area, They begain to move down the dark coridor untill they came to a large blast door that had probably closed durring whatever dissaster left this thing here. After a breif failed attepmt to open it they found a side emergency ladder tucked into one of the walls. The team climed into it, keeping alert.

When they reached the next level they emerged onto what appeared to be the command deck. Powered down equipment crowded around three chairs, two were facing them and vacent. The third however had its back to them and seemed to have someone in it. Shepard, gun ready, reached out and turned the chair around...

...and came face to face with a long dead, frozen, human corpse.

* * *

**A/N: Well, finally got this one done. I should have the next chapter up in much shorter time then this one, mainly because I restarted this one about seven times.**

**I'll warn you now, the Freelancer universe will not be quite the same as the Freelancer universe from the game, the effect of the SP missions in Freelancer won't vaporise like they did in the game. Rheinland will keep its massive fleet (200 battleships by my own conservative estimates, cruiser, gunboat and fighter numbers are probably just silly) and its leaders will still be dead, Kusari will still be pissed off for being subjugated and so forth.**

**Oh, and sorry for any spelling problems, my spell check is acting funny... again...  
**


	4. Chapter 3: Into the maw

_**A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be. **** -Albert Einstein**_

Shepard jumped back in shock, he never honestly believed that the owners of this ship could possibly be human. Yet here was a human. His skin had only decomposed a small amount before the sub zero temperatures of space overtook the ship, preserving his body. He was wearing a blue and gold uniform and he had some sort of red visor over his right eye.

"This... This simply isn't possible." Shepard voiced, visibly shaken. He quickly regained his composure. "Tali, Legion, see if you can get some of this hardware on-line. We'll need to recover any information we can from the computers before we do anything else."

While the others activated their omni tools and began to work on the computers, Shepard examined the body. It was definitely a human, some where in his mid 30s. Shepard pulled the red visor off of his eye and pocketed it for latter inspection. He then went about searching the rest of the body, turning up nothing but a pack of cigarettes, or at least he was pretty sure they were cigarettes. Disappointed he began to search the station and was rewarded with something much more interesting. Next to the man sitting in a small holster was a pistol. Complete with handle, barrel and trigger guard. It didn't seem to fold in on itself like modern firearms did and he could see no place where one might eject thermal clips from. He shoved the pistol into one of his empty heavy weapon ammo packs.

"Shepard Commander! We have found something." Shepards examination of the body done, he turned his full attention to Legion. "We have isolated an automated start up routien. If activated it should bring this vessels power generator back online."

Tali chimed in. "Wait, you mean this ship can start itself? I that explains why we've only seen one body here. Most of this ships systems must be automated."

"I don't much like the idea of waking this giant up without knowing more about it, but we need that power to be able to examine the computers more closely..." Shepard said, "Do it, but be ready for trouble."

"Acknowledged." Legion hit a few buttons on his omni tool which was followed by a new humming. A few minutes latter the lights begain flickering on one by one along with some of the computers. The few bits of debris that were floating around fell to the ground as gravity came back to the ship.

A synthesized female voice filled the room. "Primary power on-line. Error: Defensive turrets 4 and 6 are not responding. Error: Secondary nuclear drives not responding. Warning: Life-support system failure. Warning: Radiation damage detected."

"Legion, I want you to get to work grabing every bit of data you can from the computers. Tali, see anything interesting?"

Tali was already sitting at one of the stations, a number of blue holograms surrounded her. "A few things. I think this is the cargo manifest. It says this ship was hauling 10,000 units of something called tradelane and jumpgate parts to a place called Dallas Research Station in the Texas system. Do any of those names mean anything to you?"

"Dallas? Texas? Those are the names of places back on Earth, but I've never heard of a star system named Texas.."

"Here, this looks like a set of ship specs. Fission generators, nuclear drives, plasma turrets." Excitement slowly crept into Tali's voice. "Shepard, with this we could-"

Tali was interupted by the ships voice, "Warning: Gravitational anomoly detected."

Shepard and Tali's eyes met, Shepard opened his mouth to ask what was happening but was interrupted by a rather violent shaking that knocked Shepard clean off of his feet. Once he regained his footing he could see the debris field outside of the windows were flying past them straight into the maw of what looked like a blue and red black hole that had electrical storms dancing around it.

Shepard activated his radio. "Joker! Get that shuttle over here!" _static_ "Joker! Do you read me?" All that greeted him was more static. "Tali, Legion, please tell me there's something you can do."

His response was the ship saying "Go to" as the nose began to slowly turn away from the hole that was pulling them in and in the direction of the Normandy which was sitting in the opposite direction. On a hunch he looked over at Legion for an explanation.

"We have activated the vessels auto navigation systems." Legion looked at one of the holographic readouts before continuing in a strained and hurried voice. "We are still moving towards the anomaly, impact in ten seconds!"

Debris began to rap against the ships hull, despite the auto navs best efforts to avoid them. The last thing Shepard sees before everything goes black is a very large hunk of metal headed straight for the window...  


* * *

_On board the Normandy,_

_Edge of the debris field_

"No! There must be something we can do!" Joker screamed at EDI, they watched from a distance as the anomaly opened and began to swallow the debris field.

"The area is to unstable to aproach without risking the Normandy being sucked in as well, I'm sorry Jeff."

"So what? We just wait here and hope that... thing stabilizes?"

"Its all we can do."

Joker sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Shit... Garrus is going to have my head for this"

Meanwhile, the last bits of the field dissapeared through the anomaly, headed to god knows where.

* * *

**A/N: Another chapter done, 'tis a bit shorter then I would have liked but better to make it short then jam it full of filler.**

**I would like to thank everyone for their reviews, I'm glad to know that someone likes my work, or is at least amused by it. The more reviews I get the more motivated I'll be to turn out chapters.**

**Oh, and a note to Ogi: You may have noticed an... Odd message from me in reply to your review. I kinda accidentally hit the reply button before I was ready, but I'll provide my reasoning for 200 Rheinland Battleships here.**

**In game we can see that there are two battleships at every TL intersection, assuming this trend continues throughout all of Rheinland there are about 56 battleships in Rheinland. They attacked New Tokyo with a force of 40 battleships, assuming that they sent even half of that number to Liberty and Bretonia during their attacks on the respective houses this bring total numbers to an absolute minimum of 140. I'm just assuming that overall numbers are a bit higher then the absolute theoretical minimum.  
**


	5. Chapter 4: The other side

_Battleship Mississippi, Texas system_

_Liberty space_

Captain June Tish waited outside of Old Misses medical lab, staring at her reflection in the window, red hair like fire, green eyes and a cigarette in her mouth. She was a Liberty Security Force agent, one of the best and she was here on a top priority assignment.

A few weeks ago a very strange and very large jump hole opened near the Grande Negra dark matter cloud, swallowing a very large amount of debris before disappearing, then it reappeared a few days ago and spat everything in swallowed right back out plus a very interesting package.

Outside of the window she could see a Heavy Lifter grip the Supply Ship Ft. Worth in its massive clamps, bound back to New York. By the time the Navy arrived on the scene a group of Liberty Rouges had already stripped the wreak clean of what they could, fortunately they didn't notice the escape pod that launched from it.

The pod was recovered by the Navy and brought back to this ship along with both of its occupants. She was here to take them into LSF custody as soon as possible.

"Captain Tish?" A guard behind her called, "They're ready to see you now."

Tish, eager to get this done, followed the guard into the lab, inside there were two other men, one in a Liberty Navy officer uniform with a buzz cut hairdo, the other in a scientists suit with thinning, grey hair.

The man of science was the first one to speak up, "Ah, you must be Capt. Tish. I am Dr. Peltier and this is Commander Tilton."

Tilton nodded his head, "A pleasure, my ship was the one that recovered the subjects and drove off the Rouges."

Peltier continued, "Now that you're here, I'm sure you'll be eager to hear about your-"

He was interrupted by the doors opening once again to reveal a large, bald man with a thick moustach wearing an LSF uniform, a man Tish knew. He walked in nonchalantly. "Am I interrupting anything?"

Tish saluted and said, "Major Scrote? I told to expect you."

Scrote returned the salute, "This mission top priority, I came to see it through personally. Oh, and I'd prefer it if you called me by my callsign, King."

Tish released her salute, "Of course, King."

Peltier cleared his throat, gaining everyone's attention, "If there will be no more interuptions I'd like to get on with this."

"Don't worry," King said, "No more surprises are in store."

Peltier pushed a few button on his console bringing up the results of their medical scans in the form of two holograms. "Out of the two specimens we have acquired I'm not sure which one is more interesting. The human has extensive cybernetics throughout his entire body, necrotized tissue suggests that he was dead at one point. The other one isn't even remotely human, her DNA actually reads as corrupt on our scanners."

Tilton stroked his chin and said, "How do you know its a she if its completely alien?"

"Yes, well you see this red zone here?" Peltier said, pointing at the crotch of one of the holograms "That's the only thing we could identify. Human sperm, belonging to her companion."

"At least we know that they're friendly to humans." King chuckled.

Peltier shot King a dirty look before continuing, "It's a good thing we didn't take her out of her suit when we first got her on board, the scans show the conditions inside of the suit to be sterile on a level only found in our most expensive medical labs, I don't want to guess what would happen if we exposed her to open air conditions."

"Have either of them woken up yet?" Tish asked.

"No, the alien we don't know enough about to do anything to her, the human on the other hand has been hell to keep under. His cybernetics seem to filter out all posions and tranquilizers and accelerate his healing rate..." He looked at one of the computer screens, "Speak of the devil, it looks like he's woken up. I'm sure you lot are in a hurry to go and talk to him, I won't keep you here."

At that King, Tish and Tilton filed out of the room headed to the holding cells where their guest was waiting.

"King," Tish said, "I know you're my superior but this is my mission, with your permission I would like to do this my way."

"Of course," King replied, "I'm not here to get in your way, I'm just here as insurance."

"Expecting trouble are you?"

"I learned a long time ago that trouble has a way of biting you in the ass when least convenient"

* * *

Shepard began to come too, he didn't know where he was or what happened, all that he knew was that something bad had happened. He tried move but he was held to a chair by restraints, he looked around and saw the tell tail signs of an interrogation room.

_This can't be good. _Shepard thought to himself, then he begain to panic. _Wait- Where I Tali? If anything bad happened to her..._

Thankfully, the door opened interrupting his train of thought. A woman with red hair wearing a blue and yellow uniform entered the room.

Shepard started yelling at her, "Who are you? Where is Tali? If you hurt her I'll..."

She raised her hands to try to disarm him, "Easy now, I'm assuming that this Tali would be your female companion. She's fine, as far as we can tell. You and your friend are in LSF custody pending an investigation into the second Dallas incident. I'm sure this whole thing is just one big misunderstanding but I need your help to get you in the clear. Lets start with the basics, what is your name?"

Shepard paused, _She doesn't know who I am? But she's clearly human,_ "I'm Commander Shepard."

"What were you doing on the Ft. Worth?"

"Looking for new technology"

"New technology? On that ship? Never mind, what is your companion?"

Shepard paused again, _she doesn't know what a quarian is?_ "She's a quarian."

"So she isn't human?"

"What, have you never seen an alien before?"

"No." she stated matter of factly, she was playing with some sort of PDA, possibly a lie detector or a recording device.

Shepard paused yet again, _No contact with aliens... This must be where that ship came from, but these are humans, how is this possible?_ He was about to open his mouth to ask her something, but she interrupted him with another question.

"What is your home planet?"

"Earth."

Her eyes went wide with shock, she did something with her PDA before looking back at him with a look of utter disbelief. "Do you work for the Coalition?"

"Then what?"

"Just answer the question!"

"No, I've never even heard of them."

She did something with her datapad again, then she let out an audible sigh as if a releif. "Thank you for your help" she said as she got up and left the room, leaving Shepard to his thoughts once again.

* * *

Tish stepped out of the interrogation room to meet King and Tilton, both of them had been watching the conversation over a set of monitors.

King spoke up first, "Was he telling the truth, about being from Earth?"

She lifted up her PDA, "This thing says he was telling the truth and its never been wrong before."

Tilton chimed in "That's simply not possible, Earth was destroyed!"

"You don't know that," Tish said, "the last records we have of sol are from when the sleeper ships launched, for all we know the Alliance could have turned the tides since we left"

"Yes, of course you're right" Tilton said apologetically.

Tish turned back to King, "We've got to get these two to Zone 21 before news of their existence gets out. Come on, we need to secure transport."

"Sure, I'm right behind you" King stated in a bored tone as they both walked down the hall.

Tilton however remained at the door. He looked at one of the monitors showing this Shepard sitting strapped in a chair, helpless. He stroked his chin as his eyes narrowed as he pondered over what that strange man said, and what it implied.

* * *

**A/N: Readers I present to you a challenge: I'm curious to see if anyone can identify where I'm getting my names for most the OC freelancer characters. PM me if you think you know where I got them from.**


	6. Chapter 5: New enemies

Shepard heard the doors to his cell open once again, but this time instead of the fire haired women that he saw last time a man in a buzz cut and a very different uniform stepped into his /2010/05/more-story-related-mass-effect-2-dlc-on-the-wayw. "Who are you?" Shepard ask suspiciously.

The man dismissed his question with a wave of his hand, "That is not important, what is important is why you lied about Earth." His voice dripped of authority, and something else that Shepard couldn't quite place.

"What? I didn't lie-" Shepard began to respond, but was cut short by an outburst coming from his new interrogator.

"Don't think you can fool me! Earth along with the rest of the Solar system was destroyed nearly 800 years ago! Now why did you lie!?" He yelled, pointing his finger in Shepards face as he finished.

Shepard was dumbfounded, _800 years ago? That can't be. _"Look I'm telling you the truth, I don't know where you got the crazy idea that Earth was-" He was cut off again when his interrogator hit him across the face. Shepard couldn't help but chuckle, after all he was trained to resist torture as a part of his N7 training. "Do you actually think that torture will get anywhere with me even if I am lieing?"

"No," the man said, his temper leveling out, "fortunately however, I do not need such primitive methods" as he spoke two things happened, first a smile slowly spread across his face, something not unexpected. The second thing was completely unexpected on the other hand. The lights in the room seemed to darken as a purple glow began to emanate from the man, what seemed to be small electrical storms formed around his head and hands. His eyes lit up in an intense glow of purples and blues, springing out to the sides in a freakish manner.

He spoke again, a second, alien voice interlacing with his normal human one. "You will surrender all of your secrets to me, you are powerless to resist." Shepards chair began straightening out, leaving him horizontally flat, the "man" walked around him once again until he was standing directly over his head. Shepard tried to fight his restraints, but they were locked tight by heavy metal locks, much more effective then the restraints he had found Jack in on the Purgatory. The creature put its hands on each side of Shepards head, centering its head over his, "Do not worry, it will all be over soon," it stated in what it no doubt thought was a soothing voice.

Unbeknown to both of the cells occupants, the doors to the cell opened once again and a third person joined them. There was a bright red flash that caused the creature to jerk its back backwards, it then slumped to the floor dead. The third occupant spoke, "Well that settles it, I'm getting you out of here."

A large, dark skinned bald man with a mustache came into Shepards view and began to work on releasing his restraints. He mumbled to himself as he worked. "Hard to believe that Tilton was one of them"

The restraints came off surprisingly fast, while Shepard was in the process of sitting up and rubbing his wrists where he strained them against the restraints he found a gun being shoved into his hand.

"Come on," The man said hurriedly, "we don't have much time."

"Now just hold on a minute!" Shepard angrily commanded, "this is the second time this I've woken up in a completely unknown place facing a danger I know nothing about, before I'm doing anything I need some information."

The man sighed, "Look, we don't have any time. This is all you need to know: I'm King, I work for people who want me to keep you safe from creatures like Tilton there," he said, gesturing towards the body in the middle of the room, "now come on, there will be time for more explanations latter."

Shepard paused for a moment of thought, he certainly didn't have many options. He examined the gun that was forced into his hand earlier. It looked a fair bit like the antique models that he saw in a number of war museums. It didn't seem to fold like all modern firearms and he noticed a leather gun holster on Kings belt indicating that they also didn't have magnetic clamps. On the but of the rifle stenciled in bright blue was a half of a five point star with red and blue lines jutting out from the cut off side.

"Its a standard issue Liberty blaster" King explained, "I believe this particular model is nuclear powered. You might only be able to fire off a shot every two seconds but you never have to worry about reloading it or running out of ammo, main reason the old nuclear jobs are still in use."

King looked over the orange and red prison jumpsuit that Shepard was wearing, "Now we can't have you running around in that, I don't think even I could talk my way out if we run into someone." He turned towards a small container that he must have brought in with him and tossed it at Shepard.

"C'mon and get dressed before someone comes to find out what happened to the security cameras." King said hurriedly, watching the door.

Shepard opened the container and found that it contained a jumpsuit and jacket identical to Kings. It only took him a second to slip into it, most of that second being spent trying to figure out how to do up the seamless zipper along the front. Once he was done he looked over his body, now bright in shades of yellow, blue and red. "And I thought my teams uniforms were bad at giving us away..."

King looked him over once, "Good enough but we've wasted enough time already. We've got five minutes to get out of here before things get complicated. And before you ask, you're companion is going to meet us at the ship." As he finished her opened the door and started walking, not checking to see if Shepard was following.

Shepard, not seeing any better alternative, fell into step behind King. He was overwhelmed with a feeling of deja view. What was happening here reminded him a lot of when he first woke up in Cerberus care.

_Well, at least its not exactly the same,_ he thought to himself, _there aren't any mechs trying to kill me and I'm not completely alone. Tali's still here somewhere._

King walked with a brisk purpose down the golden coloured halls. Every once in awhile they would pass groups of what Shepard assumed were soldiers and technicians as well as the occasional mech gaining nothing but disinterested glances. Shepard kept himself right behind King, keeping his hand on his blaster just in case.

* * *

The Liberty Dreadnoughts hanger bay was massive. Above there were two ships, a Patriot light fighter and a custom LSF Defender hanging from the ceiling. The Defender had its tri-wings all folded in so that it would take up the least amount of space possible. Below in a pit there were three standard navy owned Defenders lined up in a row, again with their wings folder in to allow them to fit. In the center of the bay there was a platform suspended over the pit, on that platform the massive hulk of an armored transport stood over three figures. One of the walls was nothing but a massive ceiling to floor door which ships used when launching. The door lead to an airlock meaning that the hangar bay itself is never exposed to open space at any time during a ships docking or launch.

The first figure was lying on a floating bed, covered with a white tarp to hide its identity. The second figure was an entirely unremarkable Liberty Navy private with a pistol and stun baton resting on his belt, he was patiently watching the third figure, an LSF agent by the name of Captain Tish, pace and fume.

"Where the hell did King run off to? And who gave the order to bring that thing here?" Tish fumed.

The private maintained a calm exterior that was the result of years of practice in dealing with angry superiors. "Ma'am, the orders I recived were from you."

"Yes but they weren't suppose to go into effect for another fifteen minutes! We haven't had time to properly secure the package even!" She shouted, flailing her arms in her rage.

As she spoke two new people entered the bay, King and Shepard. Despite the fact that they made no attempt to conceal their approach Tish didn't notice them until they were only a few feet away.

Tish was about to chew him out when she noticed the identity of Kings companion, her rage grew tenfold. "King? What's going on here? What the hell is that man doing in a-" Her demand was cut short by a sharp scream and an electrical crack. She fell to the floor, smoke rising from her back. The Navy private stood over her with his stun baton still crackling with energy.

"'bout time you got here" the private said with a smile on his face, "I wasn't sure how long I could keep her from sounding the alarms." He pointed at the tarped medical maglev and a small metal box sitting under it. "You're packages are secure and stable, just like you asked."

King unsheathed his own stun baton and put his free arm on the privates shoulder. "Good work. Tell Juni that the Nomads managed to infiltrate this ship and may still be on the loose. And sorry, I know how much these sticks can hurt." Kinks baton kracked to life and knocked the private out could with an electrical crack.

Shepard had already made his way to the maglev sensing who was lying underneath the tarp. When he lifted the tarp off his suspicions were confirmed. Tali lay on the white padded surface still in her suit. Her purple robes were singed and torn in a few places and it was evident that the pockets on her utility belt had been emptied; but other then that she looked no worse for wear. An idea hit him and he checked her arm for its omni tool, his being gone along with the rest of his gear. Sure enough it was still there, the scientists must have assumed it to be a part of the suit. Shepard quickly pulled it off of her and put it on his own arm. He was about to activate it and run a medical diagnostic when someone grabbed his shoulder.

"There will be time for that latter," King said, "for now lets just concentrate on getting out of here."

King turned around and pushed a few buttons on a nearby control panel. Shortly after the Patriot light fighter hanging on the ceiling came to life. It dropped down until it was hovering over what little space the armored transport spared and the blue glass of the cockpit slid upwards revealing a cramped cockpit.

"You don't honestly expect all three of us to fit into that chair do you?" Shepard asked, the ship was considerably larger then the Alliances fighters; but it was no passenger transport.

"No," King said as he grabbed the box sitting next the the maglev and literally threw it behind the chair in the cockpit. "you two are going to stay in the cargo hold."

King rushed into the cockpit and closed the cockpit glass. The ship rose up and turned onto it side presenting a set of opening cargo doors to Shepard. Kings voice came over the ships loudspeaker. "Get in! Quickly!"

Shepard, not wanting to waste time figuring out how to make the maglev move, grabbed Tali up into his cybernetically strong arms and jumped into the cargo bay. King must have been watching him on some sort of external camera because the doors closed the second he was inside. After quickly re-orientating himself to the sudden change of the direction of gravity he put Tali down and began to try to wake her up.

In the cockpit King, not wanting to waste time with Mississippi control, punched in his LSF override codes starting the launch sequence automatically. A short airlock cycle latter and his ship was in space making a beeline for the trade lane that would take hit to the Bering jump gate.

"Man," King said to no one in particular, "running to Rheinland for safety instead of away from it... That just isn't right. This had better be worth it."


	7. Chapter 6: Rheinland

It was dark inside of the cramped Patriots cargo bay, the ship was designed for police work and as a result only had enough room for one or two escape pods or a small amount of confiscated goods. This meant that while Shepard did not have enough room to stand he had more the enough room to kneel beside Tali. She was out cold but omni tool scans showed that she didn't have any major injuries. While this wasn't exactly a battlefield Shepard thought that the best course of action would be standard battlefields procedure and hit her with a dose of Medigel. He was quickly rewarded with a pair of glowing dots emanating from behind her visor.

Tali lay still for a moment before her surroundings registered. She would have shot right up if Shepard didn't grab her to keep her from banging her head on the ceiling.

Tali quickly settled down after she realized that she was in Shepards arms. "Shepard? Where are we? What happened?" She asked.

He himself wasn't entirely certain what the answers to the questions were, but he tried to answer them as best he could. "We're in the cargo hold of a fighter. The ship we were on was hit by a massive piece of debris that knocked us both out as far as I can tell. I'm still not entirely certain about what happened after that."

Tali took a moment to take it all in, what little of it there was. Shepards tone turned worried, "Are you alright? You look like you took a real beating."

Tali looked over her battered, but intact, suit. "I think I feel just as bad as I look, but I've been through worse. I'm fine."

Shepard smiled, now that he knew Tali was fine he could finally investigate the rest of the cargo bay. The bay was completely empty save them and a couple of robotic arms which were probably used for loading cargo. One one side there was a hatch which, if the label was to be believed, lead to the cockpit. He couldn't see a way to open it from here so he knocked on it. A few seconds latter it slid open and the box that had been resting on it since King rather hurriedly threw it there fell into the cargo bay with a loud crash.

"I was wondering when you'd find that door." King said, turning his head slightly to the side to look behind his chair. "And I see your friend is awake. I suppose you'll want some answers."

"Damn well right I want some answers." Shepard angrily said, "I don't have a damned clue where I am or what's going on."

"Alright, lets start with the basics, I'm King as you already know. Who I work for can change depending on the time of day. This morning I was an LSF agent, my job was to protect the interests of House Liberty. Right now, however, I am an agent for the Order, an organization dedicated to protecting humanity from the creature that tried to rape your mind back there, and right now, my job is to get you to Rheinland where you'll be safe from them."

Tali spoke up with a mixture of worry and confusion in her voice, "Wait- Shepard, what is this about mind rape?"

King let out a heavy sigh, he had a feeling that he'd have to explain everything about everything to these people, "And you know less then he does. Lets start from the top. One week ago a massive jump hole- There's that quizzical look again, a jump hole is essentially a worm hole, you do know what a wormhole is right? Good, a massive jump hole opened in this system and sucked in a large portion of a local debris field, then just as quickly as it appeared it closed. Two days ago it opened again, spitting everything it took back out plus you two. You were found in an escape pod that belonged to the Ft. Worth, both of your were uncontentious and the Ft. Worth itself was already stripped of anything valuable by pirates."

Shepard butted in, "Wait- We weren't the only two people on that ship, we had a synthetic with us. What about that?"

"Synthetic? Like a robot? There weren't any traces of any mechanoids on the ship or in the space around it. Odds are it was picked up by the pirates that made off with the ships cargo. Odds are its sitting in some Rouge base or Junker depo somewhere. If that's the case good luck finding it."

Despite everything, a part of Tali relaxed. She was always on edge with that geth around and knowing that it was gone was something that she could find no objection to. Then something he said earlier hit her, "Two days ago? No wonder I'm so hungry."

King hand been going on about the details of what had happened after they were picked up and had outlined their escape from the Mississippi, but he shifted subjects smoothly, "I'm sure you would, everything you had on you is in that box at your feet. I hope you either had plenty of food on you or your species can go long periods of time without eating."

Tali immidiatly opened the box and began to rifle through its contents looking for the rations that she kept on her belt. Every quarian keeps at least a weeks worth of rations when they are away from their ships on a mission as a safety precaution as food that quarians eat are far harder to come by then any other race. Tali was fortunate in this case, she had nearly a months worth of food on her and it was all in the case. She then began to pick out her other possessions that were in the case, mostly tools and weapons, that seem to have been dumped in along with Shepards equipment.

"Grab hold of something, we're about to make a jump." King warned. A jump through a Jump-Gate was nothing like traveling down a Trade-Lane or even a Mass Relay for that matter, it was by no means a smooth ride. The 'tubes' in space a gate generated had a tendency to bank and turn which generated a lot of turbulance. Then again, calling it turbulence was a bit of an understatement for the unsecured living cargo however, it was more akin to shaking a jar full of coins. Following Kings advice Shepard grabbed the strongest thing within his reach: A large metal bar built into the wall, and Tali followed suit grabbing the strongest thing within her reach which happened to be Shepard.

In the cockpit King stared at the brilliant blue tube before him. He'd been flying and the marvel over the sight was long gone due to exposure. Still, watching the brilliant lights kept you alert for when you reach the end of the tube and return to real-space, and you wanted to be alert in the first few seconds after a jump. The jump itself can be hard on a ship and more then a few ships have been lost to something important being jarred loose during the jump. He didn't really have to worry about that on his brand new Liberty fighter but he understood that pilots in the Rheinland Military or Federal Police had trouble with such things before the entire house was practically rebuilt into a military juggernaut by the Nomads. There was another thing about the jump that all ships had to worry about regardless of how new or old they were. A ship in transit was completely blind to anything that was happening in real-space. That means that you have no idea what's waiting for you at the end. Space could be empty or there could be a pirate raiding wing waiting for you.

As the fighter jolted and re-entered realspace King quickly discovered that this jump was the latter of the two. The three Unioner pirate fighters that were waiting would have quickly ripped his tiny ship to shreds had he been slow. Fortunately King was anything but a slow pilot. He hit his thrusters which brought his ship up to combat speeds before the engines even had a chance to fully engage.

King didn't want to waste more time here then he needed in case Liberty ships came looking for him. He went straight after the lead fighter, concentrating his fire on the Hawks port wing. The Liberty laser cannons quickly punched through the civilian grade sheild and ripped the wing completely to shreds, blowing most of it clean off. King had hoped that his brutal opening attack would scare them off, sadly it seemed that these pilots weren't so easily scared. While King had been firing on the lead Hawk the two other ships had plenty of time to latch onto his tail and line up their shots. The Patriot had strong shields for her small size, but they still couldn't take very many direct hits. It was now Kings turn to dodge.

King went evasive, the ships small size and tight turning radius making it impossible to land a direct hit. Unfortunately this also meant that he couldn't line up his shots either. His scanners showed that the all three of the Unioner vessels were more or less hot on his tail. Standard procedure in scenarios like this involved dropping mines behind your ship and hoping that they would at least knock them off of your tail. King hit the switch that would release a mine, only to be met by a no ammo light. King mentally slapped himself across the head, he had left before the service crews on the Mississippi would have restocked his ship. King was out of ideas, he would just have to rely on his guts and skills as a pilot to get him through this scrape, and quickly.

He killed his engines, letting the ship continue to fly in a straight line regardless of which way the nose was pointing, swung his ship around so that he was facing the Unioner ships. He then opened fire and hit his thrusters, launching his ship straight at the lead pirate. By the time they had passed both ships sheilds were down. King killed his engine again and turned back around so that he was facing the lead pirate and turned his engine back on. Now his sights were firmly on an unsheilded target. He targeted the ships reactor and after a few seconds of fire it went critical, blasting the ship apart and launching its pilot into space minus an escape pod.

King checked his scanner again, oddly enough it was only showing one hostile contact. He selected it and his HUD quickly showed him that it was severely damaged. He swung his ship around just in time to see it fall apart under a barrage of green tachyon partials. That was the first time he, or his sensors, saw the two new fighters on the battlefield. They were the latest version of the Rheinland Valkyrie, distinguishable only by the fact that their wings were folded downwards in flight and that they had two guns mounted at the bottom of the cockpit as opposed to the one on the top.

Kings comm window opened and he was met by an image of one of the Rheinland pilots, his features completely hidden by his green flight helmet. Kings computer showed that the image belonged to one Lt. Fisher. "Greetings, you must be King. We were sent here to make sure you get to New Berlin safely and I see we arrived just in the nick of time." The image said with a mild Rheinlandic accent.

King spoke defensively. "I could have handled them myself."

Fisher chuckled, "I'm sure you could have, but not quickly enough I'm afraid. Liberty forces are already on the way. Quickly enter the Trade Lane, we'll enter formation on you."

The rest of the voyage was thankfully uneventful and once they reached the Hamburg system, the border of Rheinland space, they knew they were safe. Military patrols along the trade-lanes were heavy and there was always a number of large ships guarding the trade-lane junctions, something you never saw in any other house and proof that Rheinland had a larger military then they knew what to do with. They jumped to the New Berlin system and took the lanes to planet New Berlin.

Fisher spoke to King again over the comms. "This is where we part ways. We're uploading land coordinates to your neural net, an Order agent will meet you there. Good luck."

* * *

_Planet New Berlin,_

_New Berlin_

King stepped out of his fighter into the frigid cold night on New Berlin. The planet had such a slow rotation speed that each "day" lasted a full year. Temperatures dropped to al low as -73 degrees C. Thankfully the spaceport was near the equator where it was a much more comfortable -39. His LSF uniform was not designed with such cold in mind and he quickly surveyed the platform for the agent he was suppose to meet.

They were in the capitol city of the capitol planet of Rheinland and the city scape visible beyond seemed sparse, only a handful of building could be seen sticking out of the ground. Most of these buildings were either made for the spaceports benefit, transmitter towers or they were military or police structures. The only building of any real note was the Imperial Palace, the home of the Kaiser.

There was only one other person on the platform, he was standing a short ways off wearing a large grey coat over what looked like a Rheinland Military uniform, his face was hidden under a scarf. Behind King, he heard a voice that while female, wasn't quite human.

"Shepard, this kinda reminds me of Noveria." Tali said.

The second voice belonged to his other passenger, Shepard, "Worse."

"Oh come on, it was twice as cold there."

"Then I was wearing an environmentally sealed suit, this thing does nothing to keep me warm."

The three of them walked over to their greeter, who waved them over. He spoke in a somewhat heavy Rheinland accent, "Mr. King, it iz good to see you again."

Kings eyes narrowed and he eyed this man, "Do I know you?"

He shook his head, "Not vell, but ve both knew a certain Mr. Trent. Ve flew toghesther durring ze final assault on ze Nomad homevorld. I vas the only one there zat flew a Valkyrie."

King lightened up, "Wait- Herr Von Claussen?"

The man pulled down his scarf down revealing his features, "In ze flesh." He turned to Shepard and Tali, "And zese must be ze guests zat vere mentioned in ze report. Let me be ze first to velcome you to Rheinland, you vill be safe here. Come, we have much to discuss and ve should do it someplace varm."

* * *

_A note from Dr. Woodrow to Dr. Stan,_

_DSE employees._

I've been looking at that new, well I guess it would be a jump hole, in the Texas system and I've been able to surmise some interesting theory's regarding it.

You know that for a long time I've theorized that jump holes were not actually naturally occurring but the remnants of an ancient Jump Gate network that has long since turned to dust. I believe this incident confirms my theory.

You see, it seems that Jump Gates merely tunnel holes into space and keep them stable, but the holes don't need the Jump Gates once they've been fully established. The problem with the Dallas incident was that it tunneled an opening, but no end point. The thing must have been flailing through space time for hundreds of years now. Just now it must have secured an endpoint on its own. It's impossible to determine where the exit is however without sending a ship or probe through. Sadly the hole won't be stable enough for travel for two to four days.

-Dr. Woodrow

P.S. As per your request, I've begun to look into means with which we could close the hole. I'm close to a break through but I need access to the Jump Gate testing fields in Zone 21. Do you think you could arrange that with your contacts in the Liberty government?


End file.
